Thursday, June 27, 2013

After arriving safely at GrandMommy's house, we woke up the next day ready to have fun! Auntie K & I decided to take the kids swimming at the old pool that our dear Grandmother had always taken us to in the summer. We got there & realized that time has not been the kindest to Sun N Fun. When we grew up swimming there, it was a private pool requiring a membership, which meant it was one of the best places in town. It had 2 of the tallest diving boards I've ever seen anywhere & a slide. Now it 's a Y-Pool, and the slides & diving boards are gone. It has a zero-entry kids' area (the old kiddie pool stands empty on the other side) as well as a splash pad. It almost hurt to see how it has not aged well but the kids were ready to swim so into the water we went. And then I had to smile: here I was with my kids & my niece, swimming along the lines on the bottom, throwing diving sticks for them to find - all just like I did with my grandmother. My kids are such good swimmers that we all jumped in & touched the bottom in the deep end (I think 10 feet deep), & my youngest swam all the way across the deep end without help or stopping! Plus we stopped at Bahama Buck's on the way home, went out to Olive Garden that night for my Mom's birthday, and that my friends was a really fun day!

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

After a glorious, much-needed night's sleep, we were ready to go again. We had a fun breakfast & coffee with Grammy & her sweet friends (always good to see them!) and then were on the road again. This day the driving was so much easier - I can drive the road from Farmington to Lubbock just about in my sleep, since we did it so many times earlier in our marriage. I was very thankful for our XM subscription, DVD player, and car games today, as there's not a lot to see or hear out in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. My kids had a blast with our car bingo game (one of my son's squares was a mullet - really??) and the car karaoke. I might have ended that one a bit early though. We did see a fast-moving forest fire as we rounded the final turn to Albuquerque. I took a picture just as we first saw the mountain, and as we came around towards Rio Rancho, the fire and smoke had already crested the top and was speeding down the other side. It looked to be west of the mountains near Santa Fe, and I hope they had it contained quickly. Also, it's really hot in New Mexico. I live up in the Pacific Northwest now, and we're still having lows in the 50s and highs in the 70s/80s. It got up to 103 on my car thermometer as we were leaving Santa Rosa!

I woke up eaaaaaaaaaarly this morning, determined to get up and GO! My husband thought we would have been on the road a day earlier and had already arranged a day trip to Salt Lake City for work. After he left, I finished the little odds and ends packing I needed to do, woke up the kids, fed them, finished getting me ready, and started packing the car. (PSA: I should have let my Superman do it the day before. He's so much better at that, it's not even funny!). After over an hour of the dog eyeing me suspiciously ("What do you mean I'm NOT going???") we were finally ready to go!

We ended up leaving over 2 hours later than I wanted, on the longest day driving of this whole crazy adventure. Which made for a nice surprise in SLC - we ran into Superman as he was heading back to the airport. It also meant that we were going to get to my in-laws' house after midnight. Yuck. Fortunately they called and graciously offered to rescue me...I mean meet us and take over driving in Moab. I remember telling my son to get in the front seat while my father-in-law was going to drive, asking the guys a few questions, and then saying I was going to take them up on their offer to lean back and rest. Then I woke up as we were practically in their town, looking for where he had parked his car (this was three hours later!)

We were supposed to leave on Sunday (6-9) to drive from our house to Grammy & Papa's house. That ended up not happening - Az4 got sick from a picnic the day before. She and I were up until almost 1am the night before so I just said we would take Sunday to let her get better, me get some rest, and get some last minute things done. I ended up canning 12 pints of mangoes & pineapples! We got everything packed/washed/organized so I could pack the car first thing Monday morning, Az4 was back to her normal 100% self, and I felt ready to go for the morning! We had a beautiful sunset that night to cap the day off.